Rand Unwrapped by Frank Catalano Page B

jukebox that played all sorts of big band music from the 1930’s and 1940s. You could just press a button and the whole thing lit up with a bright neon glow. I remember looking on in amazement through the small glass window as a 78rpm record droppedonto the turntable and the needle arm miraculously lifted and gently placed itself at the start of the record. There was the familiar scratching sound of the needle on the record, then the music of Glenn Miller’s Moonlight Serenade , Artie Shaw’s, Dancing in the Dark or Harry James and Frank Sinatra singing All or Nothing at All. My uncle would play this music and I was usually nearby or underneath the pool table playing with my toys.
    As if that weren’t enough, when I sat in one of those velvet movie chairs to watch a movie at this Bijou, I had a big bowl of popcorn all to myself. Suddenly, the lights went down and an overture began to play as a large crystal mirrored ball glowed and spun slowly making the room look like it was filled with shooting starts. A moment later, the lights came up on the stage and out of the orchestra pit, an orchestra of animated musicians playing all sorts of instruments, rose from beneath the stage. As the overture ended, the musicians were lowered back down beneath the stage, the crimson curtain slowly parted and the movie began. The Bijou was truly a magical place but what I would learn there had just begun.
    I will freely admit that I was kind of, what can I say pain in the ass when I was a young Italian child. I loved to be busy playing or doing something. I wasn’t much for just moping around. I also admit that I used to bug my uncle a lot when he was trying to do something in his workshop. In order to get me out of his hair, he would put me in the theatre by myself and put a movie on for me. Sometimes I sat there in dark all alone and watched the same movie over and over. This was not like watching television, the images in front of me were larger than life and there weren’t any commercials. Remember, back at that time, there were no DVD players or satellite television. The only way you could see a movie, on a big screen, would be in a movie theatre.
    I watched full-length animated movies like Snow White, Peter Pan and Sleeping Beauty. But my favorites were the wise cracking short subject cartoons like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and of course Donald Duck . My uncle would put on a whole reel of them at once. These short subject cartoons, when viewed today, still hold our attention because they are smartly written and funny. I got a lot of my wise quacking kind of attitude from these animated characters. Of course Bugs Bunny cannot be mentioned without his famous line, “Eh… what’s up doc?” Usually spoken while eating a carrot to Elmer Fudd. Not to pick on Elmer Fudd, but I always thought he was more a stereotype version of a gullible sort of nitwit rather than a realistic character. But now that I’m older I think Elmer was right on the mark. Don’t we all have Elmer Fudds in our lives? Those kind of boring people that we just want to let have it. I will never forget Daffy Duck’s crazy laugh and his famous line after holding a stick of dynamite given to him by Bugs. It explodes and he then stands there motionless fried to the crisp and says to Bugs, “ You’re despicable…” Bugs responds with, “ I’m a such stinker ain’t I?” These characters possessed an almost irreverent quality toward their adversaries. Their adversaries are usually authority figures whom they challenge and effortlessly overcome. Robotech has some parallels, when Rand is being pummeled by Invid crossfire in Episode 1 – The Invid Invasion , most characters would say something like. “These Invid are on my tale, I’ve got to get out of here!” But Rand, after taking some incoming fire snaps back at them, “I’ll be submitting a bill for damages!” and later